***If you’re not Scottish, best to skip this entry 
There is a more understandable one about crayfish a couple of posts down…***
Reminiscing this time about events which happened 10 years ago today. September 11 is also remembered in Scotland as the day of the 1997 devolution referendum. (Although exactly 700 years prior to that could also be described as a day with some significance).
I remember going and visiting my friends who had just turned 18 at the same time as me and persuading them to go up to the community centre to vote. This isn’t a political blog, but neither is it just a blog about what I had for dinner last night. So, as it’s an anniversary and we may or may not be facing more referendums soon, I thought I would throw in my 2 euro-cents worth.
I’ve just finished reading the publication from the government called “Choosing Scotland’s Future” and it’s a fairly non political look at the choices we have in the future (though I suppose that the fact that such a document even exists is hugely political). The only thing that struck me as being a little one sided was a quote (that I agree with) in the document introduction and on the official website that says…
“No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country, “Thus far shalt thou go and no further”.”
Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891)
Certainly “no man” has the right to say that, but a certain woman thinks that she does! The parties who didn’t get the most votes in the election only a couple of months ago, have formed a “defence of the Union” collaboration and have stated that they will block the plan to have a referendum on independence.
It’s a little bit surprising as these three always tell us that if there was a referendum, independence would be totally defeated. It brings up the question that if they really believed we wouldn’t vote for independence, why not get the matter over and done with and we wouldn’t hear anything more about it for a generation?
On the other hand, if they have the suspicion that we might just vote for independence given the chance, then they are deliberately suppressing the opportunity for the country to make that choice and they are doing it purely to suit their own political aims. “Thus far shalt thou go and no further!!!”.
